ALF
76 days until the vernal equinox
Remember ALF? He’s back! In Sega Master System form!
Also pog form. Remember pogs? They weren’t very long lived. They were huge when I was in 4th and 5th grade (and Nintendo Power had Mega Man X pogs in one of their issues, tail end of 1993) and by 6th, well, I don’t know if it’s because everyone around me got older or because they sort of died off or because schools were cracking down on pogs because gambling. I’m seeing conflicting information here and I’m not sure if Bart Sells His Soul, which premiered on October 8, 1995, was at the height of the pog craze or if it’s dated because Milhouse is being Milhouse or it’s dated because there’s that time gap with writing and animating and premiering an episode of The Simpsons. Usually they had things that were cool, like skulls or yin-yangs.
For those of you who don’t remember Alf, he was an alien who ended up on Earth when his homeworld Melmac (In real life, melmac is a melamine resin. Tableware made from melamine resin was popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Very durable but not resistant to scratch or stain) exploded and now he lives with a family in some Californian suburb. There was an attempt to reboot it (either that or Warner Bros. wanted to sit on the rights to it for no good reason. I mean, that is just classic Warner Bros). Maybe he’ll come back as an NFT. I know those are worthless but, hey, Limewire is still minting them. Remember Limewire?
I don’t think I ever watched Alf but I think I did have a plush Alf as a kid. Or maybe I’m thinking of McDonalds toys and in that case, I’m probably thinking of Fraggle Rock. He drove around in a carrot with wheels. There are things I definitely remember having: a care bear, The Count, a stegosaurus.
There’s a guide on Gamefaqs that states “Even if you change every word, plagiarism is the theft of IDEAS.”
Uh oh, looks like we’re heading into reverse Ship of Theseus territory. I think we’re good as long as I don’t use the same exact number of words ever. Which is 2295. That may not be plagiarism but you should err on the side of caution anyway. If you ever find yourself writing something and it’s 2295 words, shoehorn the statement “screw Flanders” in there so it’s 2297 words instead.
Or, you know, maybe I can get away with it as long as I don’t write every sentence the exact length as his with the punctuation in the exact place. That’s definitely plagiarism. Which I wasn’t going to do anyway. Too much effort.
I'm actually going for 2295 words. It’s fucking hard, even when I veer offtopic about Harvard caving in to the right wing outrage machine and people like Jerry Coyne wanting to suppress pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel views but they can’t actually ban “advocating genocide” even under a nebulous definition because that might alienate the right-wingers who actually do advocate genocide.
Academic plagiarism and academic writing in general is a completely different beast, built around the idea that you will never have an original idea and if you did, we wouldn’t care about it. It’s about quoting others and rewriting quotes within the strict confines of academic style.
I wrote most of the stuff on plagiarism back in May, in those glory days before the invasion of Gaza, before the latest in manufactured scandals. Harvard caved the day before I actually posted this. I was expecting them to cave. I just wasn't expecting them to cave this quickly.
Looks like Alf is starting to get a bit impatient.
I think the Master System had better graphical capabilities than the NES. You’d never know because the graphics were made in Deluxe Paint by someone who couldn’t mouse draw to save their life (oops, I think I just described myself here). Never mind the technical stuff, though. You just go have fun.
Alf’s mission is to, um. I think he has a big date on Mars.
Alf likes to eat cats. But this time, you need the cat for other purposes.
Alf is being chased by mysterious Men in Black. That counter may be really high up but it's not high enough to avoid the Man in Black's hat.
Alf, upon touching one of the Men in Black, shuts down all body functions and ascends to heaven in order to keep them from learning anything useful.
Yeah, that's dumb.
We’re supposed to go down in the basement (middle door) but let’s explore the rest of the house.
When you pause the game, the music is still playing and there’s nothing to indicate that the game is paused. Maybe that has something to do with the pause button being on the console itself.
If you enter this room via the kids' room and then leave through the left side of the screen, Alf will phase through the doorway.
If you try to open certain doors, you get this message.
The rat can also kill Alf with its touch.
The cat chases it out of here.
The light is that purple thing. To turn on the light, jump up and touch it.
Getting back on the stairs is the hard part.
He has no animation on the stairs. That’s what it actually looks like. Please ignore the cat's erratic tail movement.
Alf is a mediocre-at-best point and click adventure game that is welded to one of the worst platformers of all time. Yes, I know. Bebe’s Kids and Batman Forever are both beat ‘em ups and Ren and Stimpy: Time Warp is a beat ‘em up attached to a rail shooter slash guaifenesin overdose simulator.
For whatever reason, loading a save state causes the emulator to crash. This makes the game slightly more annoying than it should be. I mean, it’s already annoying because Alf controls like shit and his only weapon is a stick of salami that can’t even hit the rats. It’s pretty good at damaging bats, just note that if you walk into the defeated bat as it retreats downward, you still die.
Oh yeah, much like the Prince of Persia, Alf has to do a little squat before jumping. And Alf can’t control his motion in the air.
I’m playing this on May 17, 222 days away from Christmas. I know there’s plenty of time to learn this game’s quirks and get good enough to beat it without save states but sod that.
So I reverted to an earlier version of SMS Plus.
There’s an invincibility code: pause down 1 1 2 1 pause. That might have helped.
I never had a Master System but I knew at least two people who did. One of them might have been Brazilian. I was in 4th grade and that was a long time ago and what does a Brazilian look like anyway? The answer is they can look like anyone.
This is probably the one time I recommend taking the Suicide Express.
You have one continue, which is basically like dying only you lose all your points. Then you die five more times and you have to start over.
You can’t buy a swimsuit. That’s too logical. What you need to do is take the gold nugget you found in the cave and sell it so you have the cash to buy a key. I don’t know how this works. You could duplicate a key but that would require having the key in the first place. You could get a new lock. Maybe ALF lives in Hyrule, where all keys are almost universal and disappear upon use. I don’t get why he couldn’t just find a key in the cave. Like, maybe the rat took it with him because it was shiny. I know the game’s really short but why are we going through this much effort to obtain a swimsuit when we could skip the middle step entirely and just buy a swimsuit?
The town loops. There are two shops, those strange men in black chasing you and bicyclists. The bicyclists damage you if you touch their sprite even though logically you shouldn’t be touching them.
Note to self: it reminds me of a story. Find that story. Read that story. No, it’s not that Rick and Morty episode in which they’re in a deliberately shoddy simulation within another more realistic simulation.
It’s Just Desert and it’s by M.T. Anderson.
Buying a costume turns Alf into a clown and turns the men in black into dogs who move faster. It also gives you an extra hit and you will get hit because the dogs are so much faster. If you go into the house, you lose it. And that money could have went to buying something that might actually help you beat the game.
The fish shows up in your inventory and does nothing. I think it’s just there to waste 20 dollarydoos. I dunno, I’m assuming the Tanners live in Australia. Actually, no, I know they live in California because I looked it up and I was just making another Simpsons reference.
Oh I get it, it’s a red herring.
The store also offers an Alf Book. If you buy it, you’ll immediately get this cutscene right here.
So don’t do it. Especially if you’re playing this on an actual Master System.
I guess he needs a special swimsuit to fit his body, which is why he can’t go to the store.
I guess the Tanners are away because they’re dealing with an infestation of giant space ants. I don’t know if they just show up after a while or because I opened the wrong closet door.
So speaking of catfish, I was poking around the Internet Archive and I learned that Catfish is in fact a real band that they played on WAAF. I’m not mistaking them for Cracker. I’m not being catfished and the term catfishing wasn’t in use until 2010 and I have no idea what purpose creating a fake band from the 90s would even have. Also, creating a fake 90s band is one thing. Creating a fake 90s band and hacking into the Internet Archive is an entirely different thing. There are at least 18 other bands with that name. This one is from Vancouver, apparently. This just raises even more questions. If they were from Boston or Lowell, I’d understand more.
Maybe WAAF’s signal reached Canada (pfft. In the most ideal conditions, their signal could reach Plymouth. Also, one time, I got a country station in Maine on their frequency) and therefore they’re subject to CanCon.
The guide on Gamefaqs seems to think these are catsharks. Which are a real thing.
Alf is immune to the effects of Rapture of the Deep but he can still run out of oxygen.
You have to grab the pearl while the oyster’s mouth is open.
The harpoon guy had me trapped. I wasn’t planning to take the Suicide Express here. But it’s fine.
Before you go back to the cave, you’ll need a ladder and a lantern. You can get one of those things from one store and the other thing in another store because this game would maybe be too short otherwise.
The second part of the cave is looooong. You don’t need the ladder because you can exploit a glitch.
The cave is at least 30 percent of the game. Maybe even 90 percent with all that dying and game overing you’re going to be doing.
Trying to go beyond the second underground outhouse causes you to run into the Black Wall, which bats can pass through but not you.
Another thing. There are no sound effects in this game whatsoever. That’s not your emulator bugging out.
Once you get the fuel, you can now fly up to space.
The planes hurt you despite clearly being in the background, so maybe that walking scoop of Neapolitan ice cream from this Batman comic turned the entire world two-dimensional with its green aura or maybe that fuel was radioactive and Alf drank some and now he’s 20 feet tall.
They’re flying really high up.
There’s a shop onboard the space station. You need a spacesuit. You’re meant to sell the ladder or the lantern here, I guess. If for whatever reason, you went back to town and bought the costume, you’re an idiot.
Once you get that, the planes are replaced with satellites and there are meteors that fall on you.
This was the only way I could get a screenshot of the moon with its mouth closed.
This is why I played the game in the first place. The thread on Selectbutton does not recommend drinking with this guy. Use your discretion with the Krusty moon from the Dreamland level in the Simpsons Arcade Game.
So to end the game, you have to land inside the moon’s mouth.
It’s not a long game. Only about 12 minutes if you cut out all the dying and game overing that you’ll be doing.
I got the same exact score. Funny how that is.
The lesson I should take away from playing this game is that whenever I ask myself “how bad can it possibly be?” it really is that bad. And then some.
Screw Flanders.
burning question: I did this and could have stopped it, but nothing in nature ever follows a gaussian curve. Sure, they’ll tell you that it does. They say that every five minutes someone dies in a car accident, but how often are there seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses in one hangar?
Remember ALF? He’s back! In Sega Master System form!
Also pog form. Remember pogs? They weren’t very long lived. They were huge when I was in 4th and 5th grade (and Nintendo Power had Mega Man X pogs in one of their issues, tail end of 1993) and by 6th, well, I don’t know if it’s because everyone around me got older or because they sort of died off or because schools were cracking down on pogs because gambling. I’m seeing conflicting information here and I’m not sure if Bart Sells His Soul, which premiered on October 8, 1995, was at the height of the pog craze or if it’s dated because Milhouse is being Milhouse or it’s dated because there’s that time gap with writing and animating and premiering an episode of The Simpsons. Usually they had things that were cool, like skulls or yin-yangs.
For those of you who don’t remember Alf, he was an alien who ended up on Earth when his homeworld Melmac (In real life, melmac is a melamine resin. Tableware made from melamine resin was popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Very durable but not resistant to scratch or stain) exploded and now he lives with a family in some Californian suburb. There was an attempt to reboot it (either that or Warner Bros. wanted to sit on the rights to it for no good reason. I mean, that is just classic Warner Bros). Maybe he’ll come back as an NFT. I know those are worthless but, hey, Limewire is still minting them. Remember Limewire?
I don’t think I ever watched Alf but I think I did have a plush Alf as a kid. Or maybe I’m thinking of McDonalds toys and in that case, I’m probably thinking of Fraggle Rock. He drove around in a carrot with wheels. There are things I definitely remember having: a care bear, The Count, a stegosaurus.
There’s a guide on Gamefaqs that states “Even if you change every word, plagiarism is the theft of IDEAS.”
Uh oh, looks like we’re heading into reverse Ship of Theseus territory. I think we’re good as long as I don’t use the same exact number of words ever. Which is 2295. That may not be plagiarism but you should err on the side of caution anyway. If you ever find yourself writing something and it’s 2295 words, shoehorn the statement “screw Flanders” in there so it’s 2297 words instead.
Or, you know, maybe I can get away with it as long as I don’t write every sentence the exact length as his with the punctuation in the exact place. That’s definitely plagiarism. Which I wasn’t going to do anyway. Too much effort.
I'm actually going for 2295 words. It’s fucking hard, even when I veer offtopic about Harvard caving in to the right wing outrage machine and people like Jerry Coyne wanting to suppress pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel views but they can’t actually ban “advocating genocide” even under a nebulous definition because that might alienate the right-wingers who actually do advocate genocide.
Academic plagiarism and academic writing in general is a completely different beast, built around the idea that you will never have an original idea and if you did, we wouldn’t care about it. It’s about quoting others and rewriting quotes within the strict confines of academic style.
I wrote most of the stuff on plagiarism back in May, in those glory days before the invasion of Gaza, before the latest in manufactured scandals. Harvard caved the day before I actually posted this. I was expecting them to cave. I just wasn't expecting them to cave this quickly.
Looks like Alf is starting to get a bit impatient.
I think the Master System had better graphical capabilities than the NES. You’d never know because the graphics were made in Deluxe Paint by someone who couldn’t mouse draw to save their life (oops, I think I just described myself here). Never mind the technical stuff, though. You just go have fun.
Alf’s mission is to, um. I think he has a big date on Mars.
Alf likes to eat cats. But this time, you need the cat for other purposes.
Alf is being chased by mysterious Men in Black. That counter may be really high up but it's not high enough to avoid the Man in Black's hat.
Alf, upon touching one of the Men in Black, shuts down all body functions and ascends to heaven in order to keep them from learning anything useful.
Yeah, that's dumb.
We’re supposed to go down in the basement (middle door) but let’s explore the rest of the house.
When you pause the game, the music is still playing and there’s nothing to indicate that the game is paused. Maybe that has something to do with the pause button being on the console itself.
If you enter this room via the kids' room and then leave through the left side of the screen, Alf will phase through the doorway.
If you try to open certain doors, you get this message.
The rat can also kill Alf with its touch.
The cat chases it out of here.
The light is that purple thing. To turn on the light, jump up and touch it.
Getting back on the stairs is the hard part.
He has no animation on the stairs. That’s what it actually looks like. Please ignore the cat's erratic tail movement.
Alf is a mediocre-at-best point and click adventure game that is welded to one of the worst platformers of all time. Yes, I know. Bebe’s Kids and Batman Forever are both beat ‘em ups and Ren and Stimpy: Time Warp is a beat ‘em up attached to a rail shooter slash guaifenesin overdose simulator.
For whatever reason, loading a save state causes the emulator to crash. This makes the game slightly more annoying than it should be. I mean, it’s already annoying because Alf controls like shit and his only weapon is a stick of salami that can’t even hit the rats. It’s pretty good at damaging bats, just note that if you walk into the defeated bat as it retreats downward, you still die.
Oh yeah, much like the Prince of Persia, Alf has to do a little squat before jumping. And Alf can’t control his motion in the air.
I’m playing this on May 17, 222 days away from Christmas. I know there’s plenty of time to learn this game’s quirks and get good enough to beat it without save states but sod that.
So I reverted to an earlier version of SMS Plus.
There’s an invincibility code: pause down 1 1 2 1 pause. That might have helped.
I never had a Master System but I knew at least two people who did. One of them might have been Brazilian. I was in 4th grade and that was a long time ago and what does a Brazilian look like anyway? The answer is they can look like anyone.
This is probably the one time I recommend taking the Suicide Express.
You have one continue, which is basically like dying only you lose all your points. Then you die five more times and you have to start over.
You can’t buy a swimsuit. That’s too logical. What you need to do is take the gold nugget you found in the cave and sell it so you have the cash to buy a key. I don’t know how this works. You could duplicate a key but that would require having the key in the first place. You could get a new lock. Maybe ALF lives in Hyrule, where all keys are almost universal and disappear upon use. I don’t get why he couldn’t just find a key in the cave. Like, maybe the rat took it with him because it was shiny. I know the game’s really short but why are we going through this much effort to obtain a swimsuit when we could skip the middle step entirely and just buy a swimsuit?
The town loops. There are two shops, those strange men in black chasing you and bicyclists. The bicyclists damage you if you touch their sprite even though logically you shouldn’t be touching them.
Note to self: it reminds me of a story. Find that story. Read that story. No, it’s not that Rick and Morty episode in which they’re in a deliberately shoddy simulation within another more realistic simulation.
It’s Just Desert and it’s by M.T. Anderson.
Buying a costume turns Alf into a clown and turns the men in black into dogs who move faster. It also gives you an extra hit and you will get hit because the dogs are so much faster. If you go into the house, you lose it. And that money could have went to buying something that might actually help you beat the game.
The fish shows up in your inventory and does nothing. I think it’s just there to waste 20 dollarydoos. I dunno, I’m assuming the Tanners live in Australia. Actually, no, I know they live in California because I looked it up and I was just making another Simpsons reference.
Oh I get it, it’s a red herring.
The store also offers an Alf Book. If you buy it, you’ll immediately get this cutscene right here.
So don’t do it. Especially if you’re playing this on an actual Master System.
I guess he needs a special swimsuit to fit his body, which is why he can’t go to the store.
I guess the Tanners are away because they’re dealing with an infestation of giant space ants. I don’t know if they just show up after a while or because I opened the wrong closet door.
So speaking of catfish, I was poking around the Internet Archive and I learned that Catfish is in fact a real band that they played on WAAF. I’m not mistaking them for Cracker. I’m not being catfished and the term catfishing wasn’t in use until 2010 and I have no idea what purpose creating a fake band from the 90s would even have. Also, creating a fake 90s band is one thing. Creating a fake 90s band and hacking into the Internet Archive is an entirely different thing. There are at least 18 other bands with that name. This one is from Vancouver, apparently. This just raises even more questions. If they were from Boston or Lowell, I’d understand more.
Maybe WAAF’s signal reached Canada (pfft. In the most ideal conditions, their signal could reach Plymouth. Also, one time, I got a country station in Maine on their frequency) and therefore they’re subject to CanCon.
The guide on Gamefaqs seems to think these are catsharks. Which are a real thing.
Alf is immune to the effects of Rapture of the Deep but he can still run out of oxygen.
You have to grab the pearl while the oyster’s mouth is open.
The harpoon guy had me trapped. I wasn’t planning to take the Suicide Express here. But it’s fine.
Before you go back to the cave, you’ll need a ladder and a lantern. You can get one of those things from one store and the other thing in another store because this game would maybe be too short otherwise.
The second part of the cave is looooong. You don’t need the ladder because you can exploit a glitch.
The cave is at least 30 percent of the game. Maybe even 90 percent with all that dying and game overing you’re going to be doing.
Trying to go beyond the second underground outhouse causes you to run into the Black Wall, which bats can pass through but not you.
Another thing. There are no sound effects in this game whatsoever. That’s not your emulator bugging out.
Once you get the fuel, you can now fly up to space.
The planes hurt you despite clearly being in the background, so maybe that walking scoop of Neapolitan ice cream from this Batman comic turned the entire world two-dimensional with its green aura or maybe that fuel was radioactive and Alf drank some and now he’s 20 feet tall.
They’re flying really high up.
There’s a shop onboard the space station. You need a spacesuit. You’re meant to sell the ladder or the lantern here, I guess. If for whatever reason, you went back to town and bought the costume, you’re an idiot.
Once you get that, the planes are replaced with satellites and there are meteors that fall on you.
This was the only way I could get a screenshot of the moon with its mouth closed.
This is why I played the game in the first place. The thread on Selectbutton does not recommend drinking with this guy. Use your discretion with the Krusty moon from the Dreamland level in the Simpsons Arcade Game.
So to end the game, you have to land inside the moon’s mouth.
It’s not a long game. Only about 12 minutes if you cut out all the dying and game overing that you’ll be doing.
I got the same exact score. Funny how that is.
The lesson I should take away from playing this game is that whenever I ask myself “how bad can it possibly be?” it really is that bad. And then some.
Screw Flanders.
burning question: I did this and could have stopped it, but nothing in nature ever follows a gaussian curve. Sure, they’ll tell you that it does. They say that every five minutes someone dies in a car accident, but how often are there seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses in one hangar?